The UArts TPS Team is doing a lot of teaching this time of year. We have our week-long TPS Level I and Level II courses over the summer. This year’s classes include sessions on Theater, Local Collections, Comics, Photography and WPA Posters. Our focus is always on using primary sources in an arts context, whether that is teaching in an art classroom, or using art as a primary source, rather than as illustrations.

To get us thinking about objects as primary sources during our courses and workshops, I show this image on the screen and say

 “What would you ask this teapot?” 

 We start addressing our questions to the screen

• “What ARE you?"
• “How big are you?”
• “Who made you?”
• “Who used you?”
• “What are you made of?”
• “When were you made?”
• “Where are you from?”
• “How were you used?”
• “What on earth is that crazy pattern?”
• “WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE THAT?” 

Without any context for the object, and without the actual item in hand, we realize that some of those questions are really hard to answer. The question of size, for instance, can’t be judged without something for scale.  We speculate on a few things. Some of the students think the teapot must be from the mid-twentieth century, based on the decoration. Some think that the pot came from North America, or Europe, or Africa. We want to know more.

We turn to the cataloging record for some answers.  We learn that this object is a teapot, it’s four and a quarter inches tall, it came from England, and the painted enameling decoration is of fossils. I ask if the students are satisfied, or if they have more questions. We find that the answers only led to more questions:

• “Why are you so small?”
• “Why do teapots matter?”
• “Who would want to use a teapot with fossils on it?”
• “WHY FOSSILS AT ALL?!” 

We talk about what we’d research, and then brainstorm some ways to go about it. We decide to answer the fossil question. We search the web a bit, and find this bog post by Claudia Mooney from the Milwaukee Art Museum about the teapot https://blog.mam.org/2011/08/31/objects-in-focus/ which tells us more about the fossils, and why someone might want to see them on a teapot. It also lets us know that tea and teapots had a role in social interactions. The late eighteenth century was a time of great scientific inquiry, and one of the recent discoveries was a particular kind of fossil, one that came from these creatures:

Crinoidea, once fossilized, look like this

Someone who is pouring tea out of a teapot decorated with a crinoidal limestone pattern might be establishing his or her level of learning and scientific awareness, and therefore gentility, during a ritual of social interaction. We might realize at this point that looking at everyday objects can tell us a lot about a society at the time the object was made or used. Decorations are no longer just pleasing to the eye, but might reveal something about values, or aspirations. We also find that by answering those questions, we want to know more. Some of us get interested in the role of science, or want to know more about how people interacted, or why tea had such a big role in society. It’s just a small teapot (why so small?!) but the areas of inquiry are vast.

I find that participants in my sessions really enjoy this exercise, and it demonstrates the back and forth of the TPS Analysis method, with looking eliciting questions, answers eliciting more questions, research satisfying some areas of inquiry, but also leading to others. By addressing the image itself, we free ourselves to ask any question, even if it might seem silly or strange. We generate excitement and momentum, because the questions came from our own looking, rather than being imposed upon us.

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